“Our producers want to keep that water as clean as possible, want to do it in the most efficient way, willing certainly to help. Certainly tired of people lecturing to them. I don’t think our agencies need to be seen as regulatory agencies, they need to be seen as partners ... I will show regulatory humility … rather than me coming in with a stick and telling you what it’s going to be, I’m much more the carrot guy.” [emphasis added]

Ever since I posted my concerns about Tim Walz over the weekend [read here], one phrase he used during his interview about buffers has been rattling around in my brain.

"Regulatory humility."

I'd heard that phrase before, but couldn't remember where, so I hit the old internets and what I found is pretty frightening.

"Regulatory humility" is a concept touted by the American Enterprise Institute as their preferred way of addressing the role of government in market oversight. I thought I'd need to spend a lot of time on AEI's website trying to figure out who they are and who they influence, but I saw that Lynne Cheney is one of their "scholars" so that told me all I needed to know, and I moved on.

I then saw that in 2016, Paul Ryan introduced a government reform package written by the Heritage Foundation that he touted as "regulatory humility" and it was as horrible as I assumed it would be. Everything from scrapping the Dodd-Frank laws, eliminating internet provider rules (net neutrality), forbidding Obama from moving forward with the Clean Power Plan, and making it downright impossible for the federal government to ever implement another rule or guideline.

I also saw that Trump's appointees are using "regulatory humility" as their reasons for rolling back all of the Obama-era protections that we as Democrats have championed. His FTC chair says that "regulatory humility" is needed to get rid of rules protecting consumers from predatory lending institutions. His FCC chair says "regulatory humility" is the reason why net neutrality needed to go away. The new head of the FAA says that "regulatory humility" is the reason why we shouldn't do anything to protect travelers from sitting on tarmacs for 15 hours.

I spent three years meeting with advocates and opponents of laws and proposed laws in the areas of environment, agriculture, energy, and commerce on behalf of Mark Dayton, and my colleagues had similar meetings on issues related to health care, education, transportation, public safety, and on and on. My direction from him was clear: listen, offer advice, and bring him everyone's concerns and proposed "fixes." But what was also clear was the message he expected us to deliver to them all: go work it out with each other. Because at the end of the day, Mark Dayton wanted to GET STUFF DONE.

I am not sure exactly what Tim Walz means when he says he'll show "regulatory humility" and be the "carrot guy" if he's elected governor. But his willingness to use a phrase that's been so clearly defined by conservative think tanks, and so freely used by Paul Ryan and the Trump Administration as the excuse to roll back really important oversight and protections leads me to believe that Tim Walz might use "regulatory humility" as his own excuse to do...not much of anything.

Pederson's concluding paragraph raises important points about Walz's choice of language when he described what the role of state agencies would be in his administration:

I am not sure exactly what Tim Walz means when he says he'll show "regulatory humility" and be the "carrot guy" if he's elected governor. But his willingness to use a phrase that's been so clearly defined by conservative think tanks, and so freely used by Paul Ryan and the Trump Administration as the excuse to roll back really important oversight and protections leads me to believe that Tim Walz might use "regulatory humility" as his own excuse to do...not much of anything.

Bluestem supposes that there might be an explanation of the choice of words, but we also tend to agree with the late Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." If Walz asserted that as governor, he'd run Minnesota state agencies under the banner of "regulatory humility," Minnesota's DFL primary voters should know what that concept means.

Screenshots of the latest Molly Schultz Pederson Facebook post; there is some overlap between the text in the two posts, but we are presenting them as sent by our reader.

Photo: Buffers, elements of non-buddy agencies.

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